I’ve always been a bit late to the party when it comes to the Uncharted games. When the very first one was released for PS3, I wasn’t exactly eager to hop on the bandwagon and go buy it. But a friend lent me his copy. I played it for a while, but never finished it, because I was so thoroughly unimpressed. It had to have been one of the most boring video games I’d ever played. It was all the same thing: hide behind a box and shoot the same three guys over and over and over, then climb some stuff, and solve some mediocre puzzles, rinse, repeat. I just couldn’t get through it. The only thing that had me remotely interested was the narrative. I found Nathan Drake to be funny, likable, and sarcastic. A perfect protagonist to put in what could have been an overly serious story of finding cursed treasure. The rest of the cast (Sully especially, Elena not so much) was also pretty fun. But no matter how good the writing was, the game itself was so painfully dull, I just couldn’t finish it. So I returned the borrowed game to my friend, and never thought much about the series since. Until last year, when I picked up Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (a collection of the past three games, all updated for the PS4).
People constantly told me that Uncharted 2 was so much better than the original, and that 3 was pretty good too (but not as good as 2). Still intrigued by Nathan Drake, and his story, I finally caved and picked up the collection. Finishing 1 was an ordeal, it was just as dull and boring to play as I had remembered. But the story was interesting. Naturally, I then moved on to 2. The gameplay was still sort of the same as 1, but for some reason, it felt better, the mechanics were tighter, the level design was better, the puzzles were more interesting, the narrative and character writing/acting was superb. And yeah, 3 was okay, not great, not bad. But, I finally saw the appeal of these games. I didn’t think they were the best games I’d ever played, but at least I was enjoying myself now. Then came along Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (U4). Like I said, I saw the appeal, but it wasn’t something I was too interested in getting right away. It was one of those “I’ll get to it eventually” kind of games. Well, thanks to a certain sale, I finally got around to it, and I’m glad I did. Because 4 is definitely the best game in the series. But of course, it’s not without its faults. So, with that rather lengthy introduction done with, let’s get to the analysis.
U4 wastes no time in getting you right into the action. Drake (along with some guy named Sam) is in the middle of some sort of high speed boat chase, in stormy, rocky seas. I found this an extremely odd way to start a game, it taught me a small amount of how to take cover and shoot my gun, basic mechanics for the series. But there was very little of that, mostly just driving a wayward boat. I say wayward because the thing was difficult to steer, and I suffered many a cheap death before reaching the goal of a cut scene showing that I’d crash no matter what. I really hate this trope in video games. You start out just to fail. No matter what you do, you will fail. It does nothing to encourage the player, in my mind. It was especially infuriating that I died many cheap deaths, just to get to that intro game failure.
The scene then abruptly stops, and the player is sent back who knows how many years to play as child Drake. Ugh. We were introduced to the young child version of Drake in Uncharted 3, and I hated every second of it. Nothing ruins a character more than seeing them not as the hero they are, but as their snot-nosed punk child selves (Anakin Skywalker, need I say more?). Determined to hate this section, I played through it. Turns out this portion was meant to teach the player some of the game’s other mechanics, so the “tutorial” was still going. As kid Drake, I had to learn to use stealth tactics to sneak out of an orphanage. It served its purpose fine, nothing too exciting. Once out, I was introduced to Drake’s brother, Sam (huh? Nate had a brother? In three games, this was never mentioned). Sam tells Nate that he has a surprise for him, but they need to get off the orphanage grounds first. This part of the game teaches the player yet another crucial Uncharted mechanic, climbing (and a couple other mechanics that I’ll get to in a bit). But it did so, by way of Sam showing Nate what to do and how to do it, by doing it himself first. This method of teaching was surprisingly fun to me, Naughty Dog had found a way to teach players how to play the game that not only made narrative sense, but came off as kind of sweet. An older brother teaching his younger brother. I will say, climbing works perfectly well in this game, the hand/foot grips are always clearly marked. And so, they go on to climb buildings and leap from ledge to ledge, using the finger strength of some inhuman machine.
The game’s final tutorial takes place sometime in the future after that last scene (the game liked to jump around a lot, and I found that very disjointing). Nate and Sam are now in a Panamanian prison (looking for some clue to a treasure, of course). Posing as inmates, Nate gets into a fight with another convict. This teaches the game’s melee combat mechanics. Not only did I find this bit uninspired, but it went on way too long. Melee combat is a huge weakness for Uncharted as a series. It’s never been fun to me. Often times, when forced into melee situations, I found myself just flailing wildly due to Drake’s wide movement in his swings. The counter button also never seems to work like it should. This game could have learned a lot from the Arkham games when it came to hand to hand combat. Thankfully, I think the game realizes this, as melee combat is kept pretty minimum.
Now, I won’t be addressing every chapter in the game, suffice it to say, Drake finds the clue he’s looking for. He, Sam, and their wealthy benefactor (who turns out to be the villain, which is what happens in pretty much every Uncharted game) escape the prison. Except Sam gets shot and left for dead (so that’s why this mysterious brother suddenly appears in a game after never having been mentioned in any previous game). Cut 15 years later (another time cut), and we’re finally in the present, post Uncharted 3. It shows Drake trying to live a “normal” life with his new wife, Elena. I will say, this portion had a particularly hilarious moment where Drake has to play a level of the original Crash Bandicoot (one of Naughty Dog’s earlier games). Drake is clearly not a gamer, and there is nothing funnier than listening to him ask why a “fox in sneakers” is stealing fruit. Of course that “normal” life of Drake’s is shaken when Sam suddenly shows up back from the dead (this would have a lot more impact, if Uncharted didn’t pull this in almost every game… I’m pretty sure Sully has “died” at least twice now). So, Sam recruits Nate into looking for the treasure they were looking for 15 years ago, and the adventure begins anew.
I will note that U4 has probably my favorite narrative in all the Uncharted games. One of the reasons being the treasure that they’re trying to find. The hidden treasure of the infamous pirate captain Henry Avery, and all of Libertalia, a lost pirate utopia. If you know me, then you know I love pirate history, and this was right up my alley, even though it was hilariously historically inaccurate. I know full well that this is a video game though, and they need to take liberties to make things fun and interesting. Fact is not stranger than fiction, sadly.
The game is chock full of fun writing and character interaction, albeit, all Uncharted games kind of play out the same way. There’s some rich guy that’s helping Drake at first, then he becomes the villain and it’s now a race to who can get to the treasure first. Drake and his friends bust their butts solving riddles and puzzles and discovering clues, only for the villains to show up (usually by simply blowing open a wall, instead of actually figuring out the puzzles), they steal the info, and then it’s no longer a race, but a mission to sneak/fight through the villain’s massive military encampments, fight the bad guy, and leave the treasure where it is, because it’s just not worth it, or the whole place is falling apart/blowing up/etcetera.
From a strictly gameplay perspective, it played out as follows: Drake and his companion(s) need to reach some area, so, they begin climbing and traversing the level, until they get to a puzzle room. Drake then has to solve various puzzles. This is usually accomplished by finding clues and comparing the clues to notes in his journal, interacting with certain objects, and sometimes climbing. Once the puzzle is solved, there is inevitably some sort of shootout waiting for Drake. You take cover behind some walls and boxes, kill all the enemies, then rinse and repeat. Occasionally, interspersed between all of that is a car chase or a boat chase or some other grand moment. It’s not a bad format, but by the time U4 rolled around, it was becoming fairly predictable.
Predictable or not, though, the game does what it does very well. The level design struck me as particularly fantastic. With the exception of just a few moments late in the game, I never felt lost. I always felt like I could figure out where I needed to go, not because the game was holding my hand, but because the levels were laid out in such a way that it was guiding me, without actually guiding me.
Button prompts were also plentiful. If I needed to access or interact with something, I always knew exactly what I needed to do, because there would always be a small white circle on any object that I could interact with, if I was close enough. This saved me a lot of frustration, as I could have easily missed so much otherwise.
And in those rare instances where I was genuinely lost, Drake or his companions would speak up, finding some sort of hint. On a side note, if it were not for Drake and his friends, Uncharted would be unbearably boring. I cannot imagine playing this game with a silent protagonist (like Link). Not only would I probably be lost more often, but I’d be bored out of my mind. Nathan Drake sells the series for me.
And obviously, the mechanics that have been around since the beginning work well, as I addressed earlier, but a series can’t go four games without some form of iteration. And thankfully, Naughty Dog at least tried to iterate a little bit. Sadly, most of it just wasn’t very fun or necessary.
The first new mechanic (at least I think it’s new, it’s been a while since I played the older games) I’ll talk about is pick pocketing. This mechanic is used a grand total of one time. And it is extremely confusing. Once I reached the target, I needed to hold down L2, this narrowed in on the item I was trying to take. It also made a slightly brighter circle of light appear over the item. It wasn’t until my fifth or sixth attempt that I realized that this circle of light was gradually shrinking, and that I needed to keep the circle directly over the item. The game in no way attempted to teach me how to do this. And seeing as this mechanic was used once and only once, it all seemed so incredibly pointless.
Another pointless (and sort of new) mechanic was moving boxes. Yes, Uncharted has always had boxes that needed moving along paths, but I believe this is the first time they’ve included boxes that just move wherever you want them to. This was always a pointless effort to me. I couldn’t reach a ledge, so I had to wander around, find a box on wheels, then slowly move it back to the spot I needed to climb. It was boring, it was dull, it was unnecessary, it was bad.
Speaking of unnecessary, very late into the game, they introduced the piton. a climbing tool of sorts. Instead of jumping for a ledge, like I’d been doing the entire game, I was now faced with “porous surfaces” in which I needed to stab the piton, in order to create my own “ledge” in order to get to the next actual ledge. This was such a pointless addition, I was baffled as to why it was introduced, especially considering how late into the game it was. It was always extremely obvious when and where I needed to use the piton. And seeing as it just acts as another ledge, why not just have an actual ledge? There was no special puzzle or way of traveling by using the thing. It was just a pointless new mechanic used only in the last hour or so of the game.
And finally, the last bad new mechanic, sliding. Sliding is just as it sounds. There are steep surfaces in U4 that cannot be walked up, and if you walk/jump/fall onto one, you will slide down at a very fast rate. At best, this mechanic is used as an annoyance, something for you to get past (usually by sliding to a climbable surface on the other side of the slope). At worst, sliding is used as a death trap, requiring pinpoint timing to jump to a safe surface. I didn’t find this fun. Many a slide resulted in me hitting a wall, turning Drake into a rag doll corpse. What’s worse is that it just looked extremely unpleasant, as most sliding surfaces were loose, jagged rocks. Drake put it perfectly when he said, “I hope we’re done sliding for a while. My ass is full of gravel.”
For all the bad new additions, though, there was at least one good one. During the orphanage breakout in the beginning of the game, Drake is introduced to the grappling hook. This mechanic works similarly to the grappling hook in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but much more refined and forgiving. I found myself having a lot of fun solving environmental puzzles by grappling onto some tree branch and swinging wild, launching myself to a distant cliff face. It was also exhilarating to be free falling from some broken bridge or other fiasco, only to see a post that I could grapple onto, saving myself at the last second. And grappling onto moving cars while being shot at, well, that’s just good fun.
The grappling hook fits so well into U4, I’m actually kind of amazed Naughty Dog didn’t think to include it sooner.
It’s been said that U4 is the last game in the series. Apparently Naughty Dog is ready to move on. And judging by how predictable the gameplay had become for me, maybe that’s a good thing. I’m just glad they went out with such a fantastic entry in the series. The game was (mostly) very fun to play. The narrative was absolutely fantastic (with the exception of an unnecessary and extremely forced epilogue that had no place in the game’s narrative whatsoever). And the level design was superb. My experience with the Uncharted series was a little rough here and there, but overall, it was one that I enjoyed. And now that it’s all said and done, I’m going to miss experiencing the adventures (and sarcastic wit) of Nathan Drake.
